Software - Preferred Plugins/Libraries

Instrumental & Vocal Skills (Other)

Hey everyone,
I'm currently working on a track that starts off with a solo piano and slowly starts building off of that and adding a whole lot of new instruments as it progresses. Currently, I'm having two problems with this that I'm having difficulties fixing:
1. The piano gets 'too loud'. What I mean by this is that, at the beggining, the piano starts real quiet, playing at around -18 dB, and in the most intense parts, which may get even more intense later on, it goes up until +5 dB. These values make sense since there's a lot of dynamics going on with the piano, but I was wondering if this could be a problem, since it'll cause clipping. I've tried compressing it, but I feel like that ruins the entire dynamics of it and makes it lose its emotional power.
2. My violins are clashing with the piano. There's a part where both the piano and the violins together start rising and getting louder and louder and I can hear the violins being completely smothered and drowned out by the piano, which goes much louder than them. I've read online that these instruments play in very similar frequency ranges, which is probably the reason for this, so I was wondering what was the best way to go about this without sacrificing the sound of either of them.
If my explanations don't seem too clear, I can provide a sample of the track so it's easier to understand. Thank you for the help :)